Searching for the Amazons

by John Man

  Of course, in one sense there are countless millions of ‘Amazons’. To call a woman an ‘Amazon’ has become a cliché, usually a male one, usually pejorative, suggesting power, commitment, ruthlessness and inappropriate success. To her detractors, Margaret Thatcher was an ‘Amazon’ armed with big hair and a handbag. In this sense it’s a cartoon term, too far removed from its origins to carry weight. And in another sense there are hundreds of thousands of ‘Amazons’, for almost all nations now include women in their armed forces, increasingly as front-line troops. Libya’s strongman Gaddafi employed forty female bodyguards on the assumption that Arab assassins would never gun down women. Known as ‘the Amazonian Guard’, they were well trained in martial arts and firearms, and also had to take an oath of chastity, which explained their alternative title, ‘the Revolutionary Nuns’. Most women soldiers, though, are integrated, not in separate battle contingents.

  The Kurdish women fighters are the best modern example of a regiment of women warriors. Fighting for Kurdish autonomy in the borderlands of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran, they are increasingly independent from male domination. That is a surprise, given that they have emerged in a society that is intensely patriarchal. A patriarchy might inspire women to want liberation; but you would not expect them to get it. Why was it not suppressed?

  The reason is that, for both sexes, Kurdish patriarchy is trumped by Kurdish nationalism, especially in its modern manifestation.

  The Kurds were demanding independence before the present nation-states came into existence. The term ‘Kurdistan’ dates back to the twelfth century. A century ago, when the victors of the First World War were drawing new borders across the ruins of the Ottoman empire, a delegation of Kurds came to Europe to plead for recognition. They made no impact on those drawing the borders. Like the Basques, with whom they have a lot in common, they ended up with a strong sense of nationhood but no state, sharing their homeland with four recognized nation-states and an interfusion of Turks, Arabs, Syrians and several other ethnic groups. They are linked by religion – mostly a mild form of Sunni Islam; by language (in five dialects); by almost universal fluency in at least two languages; and by their sense of identity. Lacking a state, and divided politically, they, like the Basques, have to wrestle with ways to handle oppression and division: to fight, assert, cooperate or submit? They have tried all four. There are no easy answers, especially in a region now torn apart by war, civil war, terrorism and the peculiar horrors unleashed by the sect known in the West as Islamic State, locally as Daesh and several other variants.

  Kurdish women fighters have a history of their own. They look to two different sources: a tradition of female militancy, and a radical ideology of Kurdish nationalism that is remarkably feminist. They remember Adela Khanem, who before and during the First World War ruled the Halabja region with such skill that the Kurds nicknamed her ‘the Queen Without a Crown’. They remember ‘Kara’ (Black) Fatma, who commanded a unit of 700 men and 43 women in the Turkish army during the First World War; and Leyla Qasim, aged twenty-two, arrested in Iraq in 1974 for trying to assassinate Saddam Hussein, then tortured and hanged. In the late 1980s, Kurdish women began to organize. Gatherings, groups and congresses led to their involvement in both politics and in the Kurdish armed forces (some 2,000 women fighters by 1994). Usually action is inspired by ideology. Not in this case. Here, action came first and the ideology followed.

  It came mainly from a man, surprisingly: Abdullah Öcalan, a burly figure with a bushy moustache now in his seventies. He is a contradictory mix of radical, nationalist, feminist, freedom-fighter and peace-lover. Raised in a dirt-poor village in Turkey by a downtrodden father and tough mother, he saw as a child the consequences of violence, female strength and oppressive traditions. ‘Once when Öcalan was beaten badly by some other boys and he ran crying home to his mother, she threw him out of the house, warning him not to return until he had exacted revenge.’60 His sister, Havva, was sold for a few sacks of wheat and a handful of cash into a loveless marriage. ‘If I was a revolutionary,’ he thought at the time, ‘I would not let this happen.’

  The child became the father to the man. As a student in Ankara in the 1960s, he absorbed both long-established socialism and evolving Kurdish nationalism. Different Kurdish groups in the four neighbouring states rose, argued and occasionally attacked their dominant cultures, achieving little except repression. In 1972, Öcalan was arrested and spent seven months in jail, where conversations with his cell-mates confirmed his commitment to left-wing politics and violent revolution. In 1978, he founded the PKK, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, and in 1984 declared war on the Turkish state. Based in Turkey’s enemy Syria for security reasons, he was forced out in 1998, tracked by various intelligence agencies, and captured in Kenya, an event that inspired Kurds to riot in many European cities. He was taken to Turkey, tried and condemned to death – briefly, as it happened, because Turkey abolished the death penalty, including Öcalan’s, in preparation for joining the EU. By then, in a move that astonished his fellow nationalists, Öcalan had abandoned the armed struggle for an independent state, claiming he would work with Turkey for peace within established national borders. Some Kurds accused him of cowardice, self-service and egomania, but he remains the Kurds’ leader in the evolution of what they call ‘democratic confederalism’, which is basically democracy without a state. Since his capture, he has been held in the prison-island of Imrali in the Sea of Marmara, between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. He was the sole inmate for ten years, before being joined by a few other prisoners in 2009. He has had more than enough time to think, to propose political solutions to the Kurdish question – which to date has no answers – and write (forty books so far).

  His top priority is the liberation of women, which he believes is the key to liberation for the Kurds, the Middle East, and indeed the world. Liberating Life: Women’s Revolution, published in 2013, is a manifesto that combines history, feminism, ecology and anti-capitalism, all expressed in sweeping generalizations. There is little directly about Islam, but much implied criticism. Here’s a quick guide to his views and style:

  In Neolithic times, society was egalitarian, communal and matriarchal. The 5000-year-old history of civilisation is essentially the history of the enslavement of woman by the dominant male. Woman’s biological difference is used as justification for her enslavement. All the work she does is taken for granted or denigrated. Her presence in the public sphere is prohibited by religion, progressively excluding her from social life. Treating women as inferior became the sacred command of god. Thus woman, once the creator, became the created. This sexual rupture resulted in the most significant change in social life ever. In Middle Eastern culture, woman is wrapped in veils, and becomes a captive within a harem, which is but a private brothel. This explains why Middle Eastern society fell behind Western society. There is a need to radically review family and marriage and develop common guidelines aimed at attaining gender equality and democracy. Without gender equality, no demand for freedom and equality can be meaningful. From the liberation of woman will come a general liberation, enlightenment and justice.

  It’s heady stuff, especially if you happen to be a Kurdish woman oppressed by any one of four states and by the men in your life. Kurdish women had their share of honour killings, dependence, domestic violence and exclusion, and many still do. For those ready and able to listen, Öcalan was and is a political prophet, who summons them to cast off the chains of religion and tradition, and stand up for themselves, working – and fighting – towards a glorious, new, free, democratic world. Surrounded by civil war and collapse, it is no surprise that so many of them believe they have nothing to lose but their chains, and a world to gain.

  As individuals and encouraged by gatherings, groups and congresses, women became directly involved in politics and in the Kurdish armed forces. With 2,000 women fighters in the early 1990s, their ranks grew over the next twenty years to more than 7,000, fighting in the PKK’s mixed-sex
military wing, the Syrian-based YPG. In 2004, a riot in the Syrian town of Qamishli drove thousands of Kurds into Iraq, and spurred many women to join up. In 2012, the women got their own contingents, the Women’s Defence Units (YPJ), based in the Kurdish part of Syria, Rojava. Numbers climbed again, to about 20,000, and they became famous for their role in fighting Islamic State in both Syria and Iraq. In 2014, IS turned on the Syrian Yazidis (also spelled Ezidis), a Kurdish sub-group with their own pre-Islamic religious traditions, killing 5,000 of them in their main city, Sinjar, and forcing another 200,000 to flee. Some 50,000 took to the bare flanks of nearby Mount Sinjar, where they faced imminent extermination. In response to widespread media coverage, President Obama ordered US intervention. US bombers, the YPJ and their male counterparts drove off the IS fighters and saved the Yazidis.

  In this chequerboard of interlinked wars, civil wars and sectarian strife, the Kurdish women fighters have been a steady focal point at the heart of a unique experiment in democracy. Like many partisans down the centuries, they believe they have a worthy cause: fighting for their homeland, their political rights, their freedom. Sharia law holds no sway in most of Kurdistan. There are fewer hijabs and niqabs in Kurdish cities these days, and very few indeed in Rojava, the heartland of the revolution.

  Advised by a woman acting as a roving ambassador for the Kurds, Aladdin got a Skype call through to Nujin, a burly and soft-spoken YPJ fighter wearing, as you would expect, camouflage fatigues. She talked long and eloquently about the political foundations of the YPJ, then explained why she had joined up.

  My journey started with the uprising in Qamishli against Assad’s regime. There was a football match between Arabs and Kurds, and Arabs held up pictures of Saddam Hussein [deposed by the US invasion, captured the previous year]. We were angry, because Saddam Hussein had killed over 100,000 Kurds in 1988.61 In Syria, we remembered how Syria had sent Arabs into Kurdistan to divide us from our compatriots in Iraq and Turkey. In response the Kurds held up the Kurdish flag. People started to throw stones. Violence spilled out on to the streets, and the Syrian security forces replied with tanks and helicopters. About 70 died. In addition, the system was against women, so I was ready to get my revenge. People in the community were not used to a woman taking up a gun and fighting next to a man, so it was hard when we started. The religious system, the community, our families, the state – we had to oppose all of them. In 2011, during the ‘Arab Spring’, a few young people of both sexes started to come together, discussing what we could do, and I said ‘This is really the time,’ so without questioning I joined the group, even before the YPJ was founded the next year. The first time I went to Aleppo, that was where I fought first. On the first day of fighting, with my first bullet, I felt something like [words seemed to fail her at this point] . . . I couldn’t believe what I was doing. But I also saw the cost. Someone called Dayika [‘Mother’] Gulé was working hard to organize the movement, and she was one of the first women martyrs in that circle. That affected me a lot.

  Outside Rojava, in a fast-changing imbalance of states, armies, sects and militias, there are no conclusions. Towns are taken, sieges started, sieges ended, towns retaken, and retaken again. Borders open and close. Aid flows, and ceases. Bosses in Moscow and Istanbul and Damascus act as puppet-masters. Where it will end, God or Allah only knows; though there’s no reason to think he does.

  But in Rojava itself, city after city – Kobani, Derik, Afrin – has been liberated by Kurds, mostly peacefully. There has been a lot of media interest in the YPJ. On social media, a good-looking young Kurdish woman holds up her hand in a V for Victory sign; in a much-repeated quote, IS fighters supposedly fear the YPJ because they believe ‘they will not go to Heaven if killed by a woman.’ Women’s magazines like Elle and Marie Claire ran long articles on the YPJ. In Australia, the 60 Minutes TV programme carried a documentary about them, ‘Female State’.

  Behind the news stories, the women organize and fight, alongside their male colleagues. As Asya Abdullah, co-chair of the Democratic Union Party, says: ‘How can a society be free when its women aren’t free?’62 It is, in traditional terms, a limited kind of freedom. As the Kurdish academic Nazand Begikhani – human-rights advocate, specialist in gender-based violence, French-educated, now at Bristol University – told me, these women fighters are forbidden any expression of sexuality: ‘Falling in love is not allowed!’ Yet, she says, ‘they tell me that they feel liberated, unconstrained by family, house and children’.

  The result in Rojava is a remarkably avant-garde political structure. It has de facto independence, prepared to defend itself but not take part in the civil war. Women ready to die for their cause play important roles organizing a bottom-up democracy based on local councils. If they are not headed by women, commissions, councils and courts have a joint male-female leadership. Women run research units, academies, schools, health centres, even their own radio station and press association. In the YPJ, women seek out new ways to assert themselves, developing what Öcalan calls Jineologi, ‘woman’s science’, to give them access to knowledge that was once controlled by men. Not all men are happy, but few dare dissent.

  The women warriors of the YPJ form more of a female community than the Scythian warrior women, and less than the Amazonian state imagined by the Greeks. They seem to be building something between the two – a core of committed, well-informed, independent women fighters working with their male partners and civilian colleagues to create a safe haven in a chaotic world.

  60 Aliza Marcus. See Bibliography.

  61 The so-called al-Anfal campaign. According to Human Rights Watch, this was attempted genocide by Saddam Hussein’s cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid (known as ‘Chemical Ali’). An estimated 182,000 died.

  62 Quoted in Knapp, Flach and Ayboga, Revolution in Rojava. See Bibliography.

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